“For … next week?” she asked. Her raised eyebrows seemed to convey as much hope as they did query.
Again with the staring. His right eye might even have twitched a little.
So, she did intend coming back next week. Well, damn. “Homework …” he said again, giving a small nod as his brain grabbed at any coherency upstairs. “For your homework … I want you to think about today’s session.” He was a sick, sick bastard.
“You say that like I’ll be able to think about anything else.” She smiled, but it wasn’t quite a smile—more an expression that said you should already know this.
Should he? Or had he already known she’d be able to think of little else, and he just wanted to make sure it stayed that way? Yet again, that placed him across a boundary he’d no right to breach.
What the hell was so wrong with him that he couldn’t seem to stop?
“I want you to think about it in relation to what you’ve learned,” he said in an attempt to re-steer. “And in relation to how you could use your new skills in the future.”
New skills. Like she’d learned how to read. Or ride a bike.
At least focusing on his stupid wording helped distract him from what, exactly, Abi’s future held.
“Okay,” she said slowly. “And next week?”
More reference to her returning—it had Chase’s lungs filling up with air, like he’d been waiting for some kind of sign before he could breathe properly.
“Next week, we’ll … discuss it.” At her questioning stare, he added, “We’ll discuss what you’ve been thinking about between now and then.” Seemed like the safest bet. Keep her out of the session rooms. Keep her in his office. Just talking. All clothing in place.
His cock deflated like he’d just kicked it in the teeth, but, damn, Chase needed some kind of block between him and the trouble he could land himself in where Abi was concerned.
“Next week we’ll be talking?” she asked, and he nodded, despite his body’s protest. “Just talking?”
At his second nod, all brightness seemed to dim within her eyes, turning them almost grey. Hell, even her shoulders sagged inward like he’d just pulled out a stopper that’d let all the fucking joy out of her soul.
“I’ll book in for next week, then,” she said, pushing up from the chaise.
Disappointment seemed to saturate his shoulders as she stared down at him for a moment before turning for the door. Halfway across the room, she paused and glanced back over her shoulder. “I thought you had more to teach me, Mr Walker.” Her voice held a mixture of sadness and confusion, and had Chase on his feet and striding toward her.
“I do.” Reaching her, he took her shoulder and spun her back to face him. “But after today …”
“Today was good.” She spoke quickly, like she held no hesitation. Or like she needed to say the words before she could lock them inside. “Today was the best session I’ve had here, by far.”
He had to agree. But he’d got off lightly, because if he’d lost control with another client, like he had with Abi, he’d probably be looking at a lawsuit and, at the very least, a damaged reputation. Abi, though … she’d enjoyed it. She’d totally fucking enjoyed it. If he hadn’t figured that out already, the heat emanating from her and the high colour in her cheeks gave good confirmation.
“Today was the best session you’ve had here. I agree. But I overstepped the mark and pushed you in a way I had no right to push you.”
“I’m glad you pushed me.” More words gushed out. “And if I come back next week, and you push me some more, I still won’t be sorry.”
His head shook. “You can’t know that.”
“I can. I do.”
His hand still gripped her shoulder, and he brought the other up to her face, her skin soft against his palm. Softening his voice, he repeated his words: “You can’t know that, Abi. Please don’t ask me to take the risk of losing more control with you than I already have.”
Her fingers wrapped over his wrist, her chest making tiny flutters as she stared up at him. Stared up at him like she wanted to kiss him. Or wanted him to kiss her.
Fuck, Chase wanted nothing more than to do exactly that, but he couldn’t, damn it. If Chase kissed her right then, he wouldn’t stop at that. He knew he wouldn’t. Not with his cock dancing a merry tune in his pants again. Not with the memory of their earlier session still burning bright in his mind.
Letting his forehead lower to hers, he rested there a moment, his eyes closing against the battle he knew he needed to face. “Abi, you’re getting married in a few weeks,” he said quietly. “Whatever’s going on here between us, it doesn’t feel professional anymore, and we need to rein it in now. Before it’s too late.” Letting his lips skim across her temple, he pushed back from her, released his hold. “I’ll understand if you’d prefer not to come back next week.” He couldn’t look at her as he said the words—he’d never have gotten them out if he did.
She didn’t answer him as she turned away and covered the rest of the floor to the exit. The door swung inward, and when she re-closed it, he knew she no longer stood in his office.
“Fuck,” he muttered. Bringing his hands up, he gripped at his hair, tugging the strands as he raked his fingers through to the front and over his brow. “Fuck.” He punched at air as he swung for the chaise and sank his butt down with a heavy plop.
His muscles ached for him to spring up and race after her. His mind begged him to tell her he was sorry and she should totally come back the next week—they’d do whatever she wanted.
Body coiled tight, his mind screaming out its disapproval, he somehow stayed put, and ten minutes later, he still hadn’t moved, when the door to his office opened and heels clacked inside.
Raelyn plonked down into the chair facing him, her elbows on her knees as she leaned forward. “Congratulations. You seem to have gotten away with fucking the face of one of your clients.”
Chase didn’t lift his gaze to hers. He didn’t feel anywhere near proud of himself.
“Whatever you said to her in here, it’s done the job.”
His head might’ve nodded. “But we’ve lost her as a client.” He’d lost her. As more than a client, it felt.
“No we haven’t,” Rae said, and when Chase finally glanced up at her, she smiled. “She booked back in for next week.”
She booked back in for next week. Such a simple sentence, but one that had his entire body and soul in fucking turmoil.
While a massive part of him felt real bloody victorious, that small, sensible part of him that didn’t get a say quite so often argued how much more shit Chase could get into with just one more session—until Chase had no idea whether to be happy or stressed by the outcome.
As if she sensed his splitting thoughts, Rae smacked him on arm. “This is good news.” Rising up from the chair, she began clopping her way back toward the door, her, “Just don’t fuck it up,” tossed over her shoulder on route.
“Yeah,” Chase muttered. Good news. Don’t fuck it up. He just needed some help making those two parts of the equation gel.
***
The unremarkable door to Roy’s gym sat squashed between a car body shop and a magazine distributor. Lower half in blue-coated wood, upper half in steel-toughened glass, its description as faded and peeling as the rest of the paint job, only those who already knew of its existence tended to visit.
Pushing inside left Chase confronted by steps that could’ve used a good scrub and very little light by which to see the way. He made the grimy climb toward another door blocking the way past an upper landing, and shouldering his way through that took him into the gym proper.
A little less dingy than the stairway, the gym itself had windows stretching across its front and claimed the entire space over the two businesses beneath. One corner of the immediate area had been set up for weights. Another for sparring. But what Roy’s was mostly about, and what really caught the eye, was the boxing ring plonked down in the centre.
&nbs
p; A couple of guys claimed the weights, ones Chase knew by sight only, and he spared them as much attention as they did him before stepping from the shadowed doorway and into the light. As soon as he had, the couple of blokes dancing around each other in the ring quit moving and stared his way.
Chase knew them both well. Mikey, a guy who’d gone to a different school a few miles over from Chase’s.
And Jones.
From the way Jones studied him, Chase knew he’d got his number. Chase only ever headed to Roy’s when he needed a distraction of the non-sexual kind.
Seemed kind of ironic that Jones might be the one to knock his head into gear yet again.
Ignoring the way Jones thumped a fist against the palm of his other hand, Chase cut around the ring toward a door at the rear of the gym.
Beyond there, a glass-fronted office overlooked the gym’s floor, from where Roy watched every tiny movement of his members, and a little farther long, sectioned-off completely, was the locker room and showers.
Chase never bothered to take a bag, or gear, on the odd occasions he visited the gym. He’d had the same locker since his teens—the key to which he carried around like his own personal property. Locker number twenty-three contained a gym bag that held a few pairs of sweat-shorts, a handful of vests, and two pairs of battered trainers. Above the bag, shower gel and shampoo sat on a shelf in front of a handful of towels and a pair of gloves hung beneath. He probably should’ve taken his gear out occasionally, maybe got it washed, but something about their teen traditions stopped him. Because he’d never bothered with laundry then. He and his mates hadn’t supposed to even be there. Not a single one of them had been old enough when they’d first joined up, and every single one of them had lied about their age.
Grabbing out his bag of clothes, Chase carried it across to a bench, his gaze catching on one of the shower blocks—as it did every damn time.
Lying about his age hadn’t only gotten him into the gym. And coming to the gym hadn’t only introduced him to boxing.
He still remembered the day Mrs Pacton had come bustling up on him—remembered like it’d only just happened the week before.
Jones had told him afterwards how she’d barrelled through the gym and demanded to know which one of them had ‘messed up’ her son. When none of them had stepped forward as the culprit, she’d marched her way through to the locker room.
Over the sound of the shower spray, heels clopped against the tiles of the locker room floor.
Heels.
Nobody wore bloody heels at Roy’s.
Blinking water from his eyes, Chase stared as one pissed-off looking bird barged around the corner of the lockers, her eyes filled with fury as they razored the air and landed on Chase.
“Was it you?” She stabbed a finger his way. “You send my boy home in that mess?”
A trickle of water ran between his lips as he studied her, and he spat it out, his focus on her the whole time. “I don’t even know who you’re talking about.”
She stopped just on the outside of the waist-high tiled wall that separated the so-called cubicle from the locker area, her obviously-dyed, golden-blonde hair pulled into a chignon at the back of her head. Hands on the hips of her tapered skirt, she jerked her chin up toward him. “My Stewie. Was it you?”
Stewie? Name didn’t ring any bells. “Someone hurt him?”
“Sent him home to me covered in his own blood.” Her head tipped, eyes narrowed, just those two actions somehow bouncing the flouncy bows of her blouse that hung beneath her chin. “He told me it happened down at the gym.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” He shook his head free of water as it began a rapid crawl over his brow. “Either way, I doubt he meant this gym.”
“What other clubs are ‘round here?”
Chase shrugged and reached for his shower gel. “I dunno, lady. But Roy runs a tight ship. Nobody gets fucked up bad. And nobody leaves here without him checking they’re okay.” He squirted a glob of gel into his palm, rubbed it over his chest, up to his shoulder. Even as he turned into the spray a little, he sensed her still standing there. Sensed her watching him. “I dunno what else you want from me,” he said, his lip movement sending a spattering of water outward.
Still, he didn’t detect so much as a scrape of heel, let alone footsteps retreating the hell away. He made a slow turn toward her, more than ready to tell her to back the hell off, and her eyes skidded up to his so fast he knew they had to have been glued to his arse. Despite her being old enough to be his ma, despite the simmering fury she’d charged in there with, Chase couldn’t help the slight curve of his lips at the appreciation he saw staring back at him.
He deliberately let his hands slide downward, until the tips of his fingers swept over the V of his pelvis, liking how her gaze followed the movement. “Can I help you with anything else?”
“How old are you, kid?” She didn’t look up when he spoke, and the slow spread of solidity claimed his cock beneath her scrutiny.
“Old enough to not be called kid.” He smoothed more shower gel southward, knowing his own touch could get him harder as easily as anyone else’s.
As if refusing to take the bait, she lifted her gaze, but Chase caught the way she checked out the rest of him. The whole of him. Like she sized up a package she’d ordered to see if it matched the description. “Answer the question,” she said, meeting his eyes again.
He could’ve told her the truth. That he’d be hitting seventeen in just under two weeks. Instead, he lied with his answer of, “Just turned nineteen. What’s it to you?”
Her eyes darted down to his crotch then back up. “You know how to use that thing you’re playing with?”
“Do you?” Just one side of his mouth twitched as he controlled his smile. He could tell from the way her stance had gone from confrontational to cocky that she considered his question way more than he’d expected.
Or maybe he had expected it. He’d been fucking since the night of his fifteenth birthday, when one of his auntie’s friends had shown him the way to head explosions and the best kind of sweaty skin, and the only time he’d gotten no bites to his suggestive chatter since then had been the night he’d mixed vodka and scrumpy cider and created a holy mess.
Banging the shower gel down on the low wall between them, he stuck his palms down beside it and leaned over until her face stared back only inches away. “I bet you do. I reckon you know exactly what to do.”
She didn’t back away. Didn’t even blink, as she said, “Answer my question.”
He let her pin him with her eyes for almost a whole minute before smiling. “Yes. I know exactly what to do with it.”
She still didn’t look away as she rummaged in a bag that hung from one of her shoulders. When she pulled her hand out, she lifted it between them, and Chase’s focus zoomed right in on what she held.
A johnny.
“Prove it.” She didn’t say it like a demand. Nor like a flirt. More a request that she knew he’d fulfil, so why bother with theatrics.
He probably could’ve waited a beat, made her wait, but his dick tapped against the tiled wall and she’d offered her cunt to him without any gooey-eyed catches attached, and Chase wanted to fuck her. Yeah, she might’ve been nearly as old his own ma, but she had decent tits and a skinny waist, and those heels made her legs look like something from Playboy, if Playboy did a section on well-dressed business women.
Pushing away from the wall, he knocked off the water spray, before turning back to the woman and holding out a hand. She smiled like she’d scored a point as she took it, and he guided her around to the opening of the shower block until she stood on the sodden tiles less than a foot away.
As soon as he reached for the bow of her blouse, she shook her head, but she still smiled, even as the, “Uhn-uhn,” left her mouth.
So he couldn’t undress her. She just wanted to fuck.
Lucky for her, Chase happened to like just fucking.
“How do you like it?” he asked, ta
king the condom from between her fingers.
She didn’t speak, just turned her back on him, glanced at him over her shoulder, and Chase smiled. From behind suited him just fine.
It took around fifteen seconds to unwrap the rubber and roll it over the thickness of his cock’s head, and by the time he’d swiped his palm over his shaft a couple of times, a solid throb had kicked up just beneath the skin.
He took a step forward until his chest met her back. Reached down for the hem of her skirt, pleased that she didn’t object when he tugged it up over her hips, leaving her ass peeking out. Leaning away a little, he took a moment to check out her underwear. Black silk. And it covered an arse firmer than he’d expected from a woman her age, like she worked out, kept in shape. Chase appreciated that about her.
Hands wrapped firmly over her hips, he pushed against her. That time, she did resist, and Chase moved in close until his lips brushed her ear. “Trust me, you’ll want the support.”
She didn’t argue a second time when he nudged her forward, but she lifted her hands as she reached the tiled wall, braced herself there.
Slipping a hand between her legs showed Chase how wet she was. For him? Or just for the fuck? He didn’t really care, either way. A kick of each foot against the inside of each of her ankles spread her legs a little wider. A grip of her hip tugged her ass closer to where his cock danced around in excitement. He pushed against her shoulder, forced her to bend at the waist, the move parting the sweet rounds of her ass, bringing her pussy that little bit higher.
Reaching down between them, he yanked her undies aside and took hold of his cock, guided it toward her wet cunt. Slipped his swollen head just inside the opening. She gave a soft gasp at the invasion, and Chase thrust all the way inside, smiling to himself at her sharp cry of surprise. Gripping her in the exact position he wanted her, he pulled back out, drove his cock back in, the initial buzz of excitement humming through him when she cried out a second time. That was all it took. All it took for him to give in to his body and let his hips find their rhythm and his cock fill her cunt as deep as he could get it.
The Therapist (7) (Chase Walker) Page 5